People look at the "Olympia" painting made in 1868 by French Impressionist artist Edouard Manet. French President Francois Hollande authorized the art piece to be lend to Italy for the exhibition "Manet Back to Venice", at Venice's Doges' Palace from April to August 2013, the Orsay Museum announced on February 27, 2013. It is the first time that the work of art will leave Paris since it was given to the French state in 1890. AFP PHOTO / FRANCOIS GUILLOT.

PARIS(AFP).- Edouard Manet's "Olympia" will go on display with a kindred painting next month in Venice, in the work's much anticipated first trip out of Paris since 1890, France's Musee d'Orsay said Wednesday.

"Exceptionally, and for the first time, I asked the President of the Republic to lend out the Olympia, which belongs to France's heritage," museum president Guy Cogeval told AFP.

The French painter's depiction of a reclining woman will be featured for the first time alongside Titian's nude "Venus of Urbino", from which Manet drew inspiration, and will be lent to Venice by a Florence museum.

"It's every art historian's obsession to bring together these two great works of art, of which one served as a model for the other," Cogeval said.

While Titian painted a courtesan in the image of a goddess, Manet depicted a cold and dominating woman, according to James H. Rubin, art history professor at Stony Brook University in New York.

The Doge's Palace gallery will feature the paintings in its "Manet: Return to Venice" exhibition from April 24 to August 11.